Indoor Turkey Trot

I am a little over tired today! My cousin flew in from South Carolina last night at 1am [eeek] with her two youngest kiddos. I picked them up at the airport, we all crammed into my small Subaru and drove to my grandparents house 30 minutes away. I slept over and drove to work from there so I could sneak in a few extra minutes of sleep.

The only bummer about sleeping up there was that my local YMCA was having a 5K Treadmill Turkey Trot this morning that I really wanted to do. It sounded like a fun inner-gym competition, donations supported the local community and it’s a great way to push myself more than normal. Being the competitor that I am, I decided to still do the run even though I wasn’t at my Y. I went to the treadmill at my office gym and busted out 3.1 miles.

My game plan was to try to maintain 7 min/miles for all 3.1 miles. I didn’t realize that meant running at 8.5mph pace on the treadmill! I typically average around 6.8 – 7.0mph. For some reason, I find it a lot hard to push myself on the treadmill. I usually take it easy on the treadmill and run at a slower pace than when I am outside. When I run outside, I average about a 7:40 min/mile. Anyway, as I started my run I set the pace at 7.5 which by all accounts is a good pace, however I knew I was settling and letting treadmill intimidate me so I pushed the speed up to 8.0. I was expecting to get exhausted really fast, but I was feeling ok so I increased my speed to 8.5. What is crazy about this is when I do intervals on the treadmill I sprint at 8.5. Today I was running several miles at my treadmill “interval sprint pace” and I felt good. I was pleasantly surprised! It also tells me I need to push myself a lot harder when I run on the treadmill!

I ended up running the turkey trot treadmill 5k in 22:05 which was a little slower than I had planned but not by much. I averaged 7:06min/miles!. I think I still left some energy on the treadmill today, but it was a great experience and I made me realize I really enjoy pushing myself and reminded me to incorporate more high intensity workouts into my fitness routine. I get so comfortable going for regular runs, I forget how important it is to mix things up and vary intensity levels to increase my endurance and fitness level.

It felt great to have an extra challenge today and push myself outside my comfort zone.  It kind of gave me the itch to enter more races and see how fast I can run!

Do you typically run faster or slower on the treadmill?